That’s about the only thing that’s flying high for the Jets this season. When the autumn wind blows on a Sunday, you know what that means—it’s time for some gridiron glory, some pigskin pillaging—it’s time for some football. Thankfully, with Madden NFL 08 you don’t have to wait until Sunday to get your football fix. Madden has all the action you want from a football video game and more. Other than slightly disappointing graphics, this game includes everything short of the tailgate party.

A good old-fashioned snowball fight might be all you need to improve your mood in winter. Spring showers, summer heat, autumn winds, and winter snowstorms become a part of your Sims’ lives in Seasons, an expansion pack for The Sims 2. The challenge—to adapt to the changing climates—may not sound all that exciting, but Seasons is full of fun seasonal activities. Various weather effects accompany each season—in autumn, leaves fall from the trees, so you need to rake them. In winter, you have to bundle up in outerwear to deal with blustery winds and heavy snowstorms. But along with the required chores and adaptation, there’s fun to be had. For example, in the winter, you can build snowmen and have snowball fights, which also helps your social relationships. At the community center, you can ice skate on the outdoor rink or go fishing at the pond (and even cook and eat, or mount, your fish).Each season lasts for five days and affects your Sims’ moods differently. You can choose which season to play—skip summer and have two winters if you want.

With this many troops firing on the enemy, we’ll soon have all the sweet Tiberium we can harvest. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars hits the sweet spot in real-time strategy games, somehow making it fun to micromanage your resources, buildings, and troops. As in other RTS titles, players need to keep harvesting the land—in this case, gathering mysterious Tiberium crystals—to fund the production of buildings. Those buildings then create vehicles, fighters, and other units you can use to attack your opponent on the battlefield. Additional twists, such as maintaining enough power plants to give your growing encampments electricity, keep the game interesting. Command & Conquer 3 does nearly everything right, including providing extensive single-player options to play as the good or bad side, and online multiplayer match-ups. Even the things it gets wrong—goofy video sequences—are somehow so bad they’re good.

Sibelius 5 has an uncluttered interface. When most people think of the intersection of Macs and music, they think of synthesizers, MIDI, and apps like Logic Pro. But some musicians like to score their music the old-fashioned way—on paper, with musical notes written on a staff. And to do that on a Mac, there’s Sibelius.

Pole Position initially seems like a good fit for an iPod remake; this racer adapts the arcade steering wheel to the click wheel. But think back to the difficulty of the original. Unless you were that one savant who could keep racing, you probably dropped quarters into the classic, only to crash into enemy cars, run out of time, and burn through all of your snack money. While not a literal copy of the original, the iPod version captures this frustration perfectly.

Welcome to the neon-and-sharkskin world of underground, professional block breaking. Yes, we’d never heard of this high-stakes, live-fast, die-young society until booting up an iPod game of Block Breaker Deluxe. And this mediocre slobs-versus-snobs setup -- guess which one you play -- is about as engaging as the actual Breakout-style game.